I wanted to ensure that I knew the kind of audience I would be aiming for with this film if it were to be released at any point. To find out what the general public felt was the best option for the film I created an online survey for the film, this gave me insight into what people thought of the narrative, the violence depicted as well as the key themes and use of what could be considering frightening imagery. This insight will help me in the production of future projects as well as the distribution of the film produced. Surveys like this can also help an argument for certain classifications of the film when I get in touch with the BBFC (British board of film classification) about how I am allowed to advertise my film.
All of the answers given to the survey gave me some insight into the opinions people had about the film which will help us choose the certification we would like to show our film under. As shown people, we began asking what age rating the survey taker would give ours after watching it fully. This gave a wide range of opinions with two categories being largely popular, 32.3% of people voted that the film was of 15 rating, and 29% said 12A would be a good rating for the film. This shows a split in the leading opinion which shows that our film is viewed differently by different people. From this question alone then, we could not determine how our film should be rated.
We then asked people to rate on a scale of 1-10 how child-friendly the film was, 1 being not child-friendly at all and 10 being very child-friendly. As shown below this question gave a more tangible result, most people rating the film as less child-friendly, the peak of the results showing at 3 and 4 on the scale. This can show that the film is most likely not meant to be viewed by children.
We then asked how violent the viewer thought the film was in a 1-5 scale 1 being nonviolent and 5 being incredibly violent, this question gave another very split view as the peak of people decided the film was in the middle of the scale. We received no votes for incredibly violent however and there was a slight lead to people saying it was nonviolent, this could suggest that the violence in this film was not the major issue for people who believed it was not right for children.
To see how the film affected the average viewer we then asked if the viewer found any elements of the film scary, to this we largely received 'No' to be the largest answer of the three choices with 54.8%, this suggested that to the average viewer the film was not scary, which suggested that the atmosphere of the film was also not the issue for people, however, the 29% that said it was scary could have been the same people that pushed the previous votes in the direction they were in.
To test people's direct thoughts about the themes in the film and specifically relating to whether we asked the following questions:
I firstly asked about the show of violence in the film, once again this question gave a very split reaction to people when asked if it was too shocking for younger viewers the vast majority of the survey takers said 'maybe', this gave a majority of 54.8% to the question. Aside from the large group of people who were unsure however there was an approximate 5% margin between Yes and No, this margin was too small for a proper decision to be made however it did show that more people that it was too shocking.
I then asked about the showing of the confined space, with the man scared in the box. This question showed that this theme was most likely the one that caused people to think it was worrying for children to see. The majority said either Yes or Maybe this time as opposed to a general split in the results. Yes having the most votes with 38.7% of the viewers saying that the confined space was too scary for younger audience members to view.
Finally, I asked them a general question to see their opinions after considering the themes of the film, I asked whether the viewers believed the film was acceptable for younger audiences. the vast majority saying 'Probably not' with 54.8% of the vote, followed by Not at all and Probably 16.1%, nobody saying it was definitely suitable for younger audiences.
We also screened our film to a small audience of students who after watching gave their opinions and answers to specific questions about the film. We recorded this focus group and the video is shown below:
From this we saw that most people believed that PG was a fair rating of the film, these students being educated in film certifications during their media course gave the opinion that as no harsh violence was shown, and no truly fearful scenes were interlaced in the film that the film is acceptable for younger audiences, a lot of people commented however that the film has a more deep meaning that might be too advanced for children to appreciate.
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